Next up in our projection series is second baseman Daniel Murphy. Murphy had a very good year by his standards, which is to say a high average with some minor power and underrated speed. While both of those statistics went down for Murphy in 2014, he still made the All-Star team for the first time in his career, and was the sole representative for the New York Mets. Let’s take a look at how we predicted Murphy’s year would go. Here is the official Mets360 projection from before the season:
PA: 637
AVG: .289
OBP: .332
SLG: .425
HR: 13
RBI: 76
Pull%: 21
Here’s how Murphy actually did, with the best and worst individual projections among our group.
PA: 642
Best: O’Malley – 648
Worst: Kolton – 468
AVG: .289
Best: Koehler – .289 (On the nose)
Worst: Kolton – .232
OBP: .332
Best: McCarthy – .332 (Ding, ding)
Worst: Kolton – .250
SLG: .403
Best: Groveman & Rogan – .410
Worst: Flattery – .486
HR: 9
Best: Hangley – 8
Worst: Albanesius – 19
RBI: 57
Best: Kolton – 56
Worst: Koehler & McCarthy – 85
Pull%: 21.5
Best: Hangley, O’Malley & Stack – 21 Koehler – 22
Worst: Kolton – 13
Kolton was the pessimist of the group straight through, but was only one away from Murphy’s RBI total. That goes to show what a strange year Murphy had. After all, he led the National Leagues in hits for a substantial part of the year, but as the Mets offense struggled, so did Murphy’s chances to drive runs in. Also, seven of the 13 writers thought that Murphy would exceed his home runs from 2013, led by yours truly. That power increase never occurred however.
So we proved dead-on accurate on AVG, OBP and Pull%, and overall the projections matched up pretty well. But our overestimation of Murphy’s power production curtailed anymore bulls eyes. Murphy lacked much protection behind him in the lineup until Lucas Duda entrenched himself in the cleanup spot. With another bat in the lineup for 2015, perhaps Murphy can once again drive in 75+ while providing good average, on-base and speed on the bases. Or maybe he won’t be a Met next year. It’s too early to tell.
All things considered though, Murphy had a great year, and your trusty neighborhood prognosticators didn’t do so badly either.
One interesting note that wasn’t part of the projection was his running game.
Last year, he had an exceptional running game as he was 23-26 overall, but he wasn’t caught in 22 attempts after may 19th.
He continued his underrated bag stealing in April, swiping 6 bags in 6 tries.
But then on May 2nd his beautiful streak of 28 straight steals were broken, and his running game disappeared after that. Teams probably started to pay more attention to him, and he attempted to steal just 12 more bases and had a terrible success rate of barely of 50% (7-12), including 2 months, July and September, where he didn’t not even attempt a steal.
It’s likely that 2013 will be the aberration year when it comes to SB. Murphy will be on the wrong side of 30 when next year starts and it’s probably unreasonable to ever expect 20 sbs from him in the future.
I agree, we won’t see that again. I think Murphy had a career year in ways last year.
Brian,
Let’s not throw around the word “great” so easily. It was a good year, and that’s what the Mets probably hoped for. Murph’s participation in the All-Star game was because each team need a rep and he was the best choice on a struggling team.
If it was a “great” year many teams would probably be knocking down Alderson”s door looking for a trade to get a not very expensive player. Is that happening?
I doubt it.
Great would be Murphy’s agent view of this past off season. As Mike says DM’s hits would of had greater value if there were more men on base thus his RBI total would be higher. I don’t see Murphy here next season. Not at 7.5-8 million. So as part of a package for a LF perhaps?
Gotta think the RBI numbers were also off because the team has trouble consistently getting guys on base. If this team could hit and walk, his doubles would mean a lot more.
the Mets must keep Murphy, period!!
Editor’s Note – Please do not capitalize words in your post, as that is a violation of our Comment Policy.